The Film The Green Mile - Movie Review Example

The film The Green Mile was shown in theaters in 1999. The movie is A Warner Bros. Release of a Castle Rock Entertainment Presentation of a DarkwoodsProduction, produced by David Valdes and Frank Darabont who also wrote and directed the film. The Green Mile is based on the novel by Stephen King. The Green Mile provoked the British public to repeal the death penalty. The setting is the death row of Coal Mountain Prison in Louisiana during 1935; the supervisor, Paul Edgecomb (played by Tom Hanks), has several assistants. The floor of the aisle between the cells is painted green, so the last walk of those condemned to death, from their cell to the room with the electric chair, is known as the "green mile." Edgecomb's philosophy is to ensure that the last days or years of the men on death row are as calm and even as happy as possible. Thesis Statement: "The Green Mile," is an intermittently powerful and meticulously crafted drama that falls short of its full potential due to considerable over-length and some shopworn, simplistic notions at its center which could have been arranged and prioritized through editing. Plot Summary The story is primarily around an inmate called John Coffey. He is a seven-foot black man who is convicted of raping and killing two small white girls. He is a very quiet man and afraid of the dark: this coupled with his enormous size makes him a very memorable man. John Coffey is not able to do such things as tie a knot, and is described as "knowing his own name and not much else." During the primary period of the story there are two other inmates on the block on which the story concentrates. These are Eduard Delacroix, a french man convicted or arson, rape and murder. Delacrioix has a pet mouse called Mr. Jingles, who is able to perform tricks. The other inmate is William Wharton: a tough and boasting character, claiming to be a modern Billy the Kid. After John Coffey arrives the warders realize that he has a special gift. The captain of the guard, Paul Edgecomb, has a urinary infection, which is causing him extreme discomfort. John Coffey realizes this, and when in distance of Paul, grabs him and heels him. Paul is naturally flabbergasted by this. John Coffey is set to be executed, and the guards realize they have to execute a man with a "gift from God." John Coffey also has the ability to see people's thoughts or memories. William Wharton grabs Coffey's arm, and Coffey sees Wharton's memory of killing the two little girls that Coffey has been convicted of. Coffey transfers this image to Paul, the chief of the guard. By this Paul knows that Coffey is an innocent man. The warders now realize that they have to execute an innocent man with a "gift from God." Identify one theme or message of the movie. Because The Green Mile is an anti-capital punishment exemplum, characters are defined morally in the simplest terms. The director emphasizes the fundamental humanity of the two men who are the first to be executed, Arlen Bitterbuck and Eduard Delacroix. While Frank Darabont tells the audience that the two men are murderers, he shows them speaking and acting with such dignity, love, and simple faith that one perceives their executions as evil, unnatural acts. On three occasions we see the procedure involved in administering death by electrocution, a witnessed event in which certain words are spoken, restraints are attached to the victim, and levers are pulled. It is at this point that we grasp the analogy of the quintessential victim of the death penalty of all time -- someone who performed miracles, who was condemned of something that he did not do, and who forgave those whose interpersonal relations are based on hate rather than love. Analyze one element of film analysis Within individual scenes, Richard Francis-Bruce's editing is precise in obtaining maximum values however there are scenes which could have been edited further. All of the performances, from the leads down through David Morse's laconic prison guard, Doug Hutchison's hateful and mulish one, and Bonnie Hunt's scattered appearances as Edgecomb's wife, are tidy and professional, if in no case exceptional. David Tattersall's photography is similarly clean and serviceable, as are all of the film's visual and audio accoutrements. What makes the film nearly impossible to endure, then, is not any incompetence of filmmaking but a story that increasingly runs afoul of basic ideological principles and its own superficially stated themes. To avoid revealing its seriously troubled narrative core, The Green Mile has to keep piling on subplots and incidents that make the film seem softer and more genteel than it really is. Rate the performances of the actors and the work of the director. The characters are well-drawn and ably portrayed, with Tom Hanks filling the shoes of the likable protagonist as only he can, and Doug Hutchison doing a good job making us hate him. There were hisses in the audience when he tried to stomp on The Green Mile's unofficial mascot, a small brown mouse named Mr. Jingles. But the real standout is Michael Clarke Duncan, who easily acts circles around Hanks - his portrayal of John is often touching and occasionally wrenching. If there's an acting Oscar nomination in The Green Mile's future, it belongs to Dunan, not Hanks. Meanwhile, there's a nice sense of believable camaraderie amongst the guards (excepting Percy), and it's refreshing to see them treat their prisoners like human beings instead of garbage (although, admittedly, we are not privy to any details about their crimes, so it's easier for us to like them). Describe your overall reaction to the film: Fans of King's novel will recognize all the familiar elements in the movie, including the inclusion of the little mouse named Mr. Jingles, who played a major role in the book but lacks the same poignancy in the film. What's really missing from this adaptation is the overwhelming sense of the tragic that permeated King's novel. In his writing, he managed to capture the desperation of men and paint every character in a woeful light. You could practically feel this angst leaping off the page. Yet, in the film, it all seems forced and overly elegiac, as if Darabont is saying "Hey, guys, look at all the emotion I can ring out of this story!" Darabont's vision simply lacks the subtlety that The Shawshank Redemption possessed. Here, everything is on the surface; there are no shades of gray. This black and white approach to the story left me wondering if I had missed something in the end. Surely, I thought, there's some greater message, some imminent truth here. Sadly, there isn't. The emotional epiphany you should have as this world fades to black is oddly lacking. At the end of the film, Hank's character says that the Green Mile was very long. Film Analysis of Chinatown Introduction: Chinatown (1974) is a superb, private eye mystery and modern-day film noir thriller. Its original, award-winning screenplay by Robert Towne is a throwback that pays homage to the best Hollywood film noirs. The film is a skillful blend of mystery, romance, suspense, and hard boiled detective/film noir genre elements. Writer Robert Towne's screenplay was partially based on a true Los Angeles scandal in the early part of the 20th century (the story of the nefarious 1908 Owens Valley 'Rape' and scandalous San Fernando Valley land-grab by speculators). The film's character, Hollis Mulwray, was loosely derived from LA's real-life water engineer William Mulholland (the General Manager of LA's Bureau of Water Works and Supply), who orchestrated the purchase of water rights and the piping of water from the High Sierras into Los Angeles by an aqueduct that flowed through the now-valuable San Fernando Valley north of LA. The name of the character Hollis Mulwray was a clever anagram for "Mulholland". The evil character of Noah Cross was a reference to the Biblical Noah (and the torrential flood that devastated mankind). While Roman Polanski's expert pacing and the superbly modulated performances of Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston would have made Chinatown memorable regardless of its political and cultural contexts, the intelligent but relentless cynicism of Robert Towner's screenplay reflected the dark tone of '40s noir while updating it for a California-fed '70s culture. Thesis Statement: Roman Polanski's 1974 film, "Chinatown", revolutionized the film noir genre as seen in the film's cinematography. Summary Jake Gittes, a former cop who now specializes in divorce investigations, meets a woman pretending to be the wife of Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Water and Power Company. Claiming that people have seen Hollis with another woman, she asks Jake to investigate her husband's alleged infidelity. Jake begins his investigation by listening to testimony at a public hearing for a proposed dam and reservoir. Though the city is suffering through a drought, Hollis opposes the project, sending the audience into an angry uproar. One man accuses Hollis of being paid to steal water. Jake then trails Hollis, who spends most of the day checking out the city's water supplies. Later, Jake takes photos of Hollis embracing a blond woman, which he gives to his client. Without Jake's knowledge, the newspaper prints the photographs the next day. Jake tells Evelyn Mulwray what he has learned about this scheme, and the two discover that Cross and his associates at the Albacore Club, a private association of the wealthy and powerful, are hiding the scheme by purchasing the land in the name of the residents of a local rest home of which they are benefactors. Returning to the Mulwray home, Jake and Evelyn wind up in bed together. While lying there,, Evelyn receives a phone call and leaves the house suddenly. Jake secretly trails her to an unfamiliar house, where the young blond woman he saw earlier with Hollis is lying on a bed, apparently restrained. Jake confronts Evelyn about the woman, and Evelyn says that she is her sister. Jake arranges a final showdown with Cross at the Mulwray mansion, showing him evidence of both the land grab and the murder. Mulvihill, who accompanied Cross, holds a gun to Jake's head and forces him to lead them to Chinatown and the girl. Cross finds the pair on the verge of escaping and pleads with Evelyn to hand Katherine over to him. Instead, Evelyn pulls a gun on Cross, shooting him in the arm before attempting to flee with Katherine in their car. The police, ignoring Jake's claims that Cross is the true criminal, fire on the car and end up killing Evelyn. Cross then takes Katherine away, and Lieutenant Escobar orders the stunned Jake to go home. Analysis: Films that are classified as being in the film noir genre all share some basic characteristics. There is generally a voice-over throughout the film in order to guide the audience's perceptions. These movies also involve a crime and a detective who is trying to figure out the truth in the situation. This detective usually encounters a femme fatale who seduces him. However, the most distinctive feature of the film noir genre is the abundance of darkness. The cinematography was appropriate as the hero unravels the complicated, elusive facts, he flippantly and self-confidently offers pat explanations for the deeply-flowing corruption he unearths, and then finds he must continually revise his inaccurate pronouncements after uncovering further evidence. His efforts to separate good from evil - to save the good and punish the evil - ultimately fail in the metaphoric (and then real) world of Chinatown by the film's climax. Although Chinatown breaks certain rules of film noir - it was filmed in 1974 and is in COLOR (black and white film is a traditional element of Film Noir) it models itself with formal elements of Film Noir genre including the sexy femme-fatale (with a twist), a protagonist main character seeking truth, and the plot laced with deceit, murder and greed. The film uses many shadows and dark and light contrasts. The low key soft lighting keeps the scenes dark and gloomy and projects the air of suspense. The viewer is told the story through the central character, Gittes, a hard-nosed detective in 1930's LA, after he takes a case investigating adultery gets caught up in the middle of murder, lies and conspiracy- entangled into the dark side of humanity. When he meets the 'real' Evelyn, who comes across as mysterious, sensual and troubled, Gittes falls further into this web of corruption and complication as well as falling for Evelyn. The films keep the rhythm and pace slow seducing the viewer deep into the story. As in classic film noir Chinatown has a confrontational ending but with Chinatown there are surprising twists. We find the femme fatale has been a victim and is again a victim as she is shot. Gittes revelation that he has been wrong about Evelyn's deceit also loses ending up with nothing. He loses the girl, and the crimes go unpunished. As the movie referenced ..."Its Chinatown" The film's claustrophobic, cyclical, bleak mood surrounding the heroic quest of the detective struck a responsive chord after the scandalous Watergate era of the early 1970s. The film's two puzzling mysteries and tragedies - family-related and water-related - are beautifully interwoven together. The water-rights scandal at the heart of the film expresses how ecological rape of the land has occurred in outrageous land-development schemes that redirect the water's flow. Mise-en-scne is staging, acting style, decoration, lighting, costumes. Cinematography is all the photographic aspects of a film: camera movement, lens aperture, composition of the shot, point of view, close up, medium shot, long shot and so on, while editing is the montage of the film and sound is music, dialogue and different kinds of noise. Style is what earlier writers have called film aesthetics. Of course, the realistic and the non-realistic frequently merge: realism, after all, is not reality itself but rather a style or convention that requires as much imagination and even artifice in the end as any other; while even the directors of fantasy films often take their subject matter from the photographable world, the surface of concrete reality, which each such director then transmutes according to his particular vision. Nonetheless, the terms "realistic" and "anti-realistic" can be helpful when used to suggest a tendency toward either polarity. At the far reaches of this realism, the accuracy of exterior social reality thus becomes unimportant. This is reality through style, or transcendence through secularity, and thus it is a reworking of the conventions of art. The cinematic staging or rendering of the real can be carried out in untold ways, however, so it would be more suitable to speak of filmic "realisms" than of a single, definitive realist mode. Conclusion Unlike the upbeat movies that are more typical of the classic Hollywood style, noir is often described as portraying a more realistic view of life; perhaps more accurately, film noir reflects a gritty realism about the darker aspects of the human experience. The classic film noir era, which occurred between 1941 and 1958 will be studied. Additionally, the recent reemergence of noir films will be examined, as well as the themes and issues that are emphasized in these recent films. The Chinatown (1974) belongs to film noir genre as it is expressed visually and thematically, and in particular the ways in which film noir represents and reflects the cultural conditions of the time in which it is produced. Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Methuen, 1985. Branigan, Edward. Point of View in the Cinema. New York: Mouton, 1984. Salt, Barry. Film Style & Technology. Southhampton: Starword, 1992. Schatz, Thomas. "The Hardboiled Detective Genre." From Hollywood Genres. New York: Random House, 1981. Silver, Alain, and James Ursini. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996. Read More